Geo-tracking apps such as Find My Kids and Google Family Link are fast growing in popularity, handing parents powers to monitor their children. But how are the latter experiencing what previous generations might have la-belled as an invasion of their privacy? Could these devices even hurt youths’ sense of independence?
We set out to answer these questions in our research, which involved a series of one-on-one interviews with parents who geo-tracked their children, and teenagers who were geo-tracked.
Overall, the parents who took part in our survey claimed they were driven to use these apps not by nosiness(多管闲事),but a sense of care in the face of what they perceived as dangerous or uncertain environments. Knowing a child’s geographical position cannot guarantee their safety when faced with an incident in real time, but checking where they are can help ease parental fears. Other parents surveyed admitted to monitoring their children only in the case of unanswered phone calls or unfulfilled requests. Rather than a systematic method of monitoring, geo-tracking acted as a “lastresort” option after parents failed to reach their children.
While some teenagers were sympathetic to their parents’ anxieties, most of them perceived the use of geo-tracking apps as an invasion of their privacy. When seen as a tool to contact, geo-tracking appeared to be quite well accepted by them in our survey. However, most teenagers in our sample were worried about their parents’ use of monitoring apps.
Geo-tracking is not without its ill effect on family relationships. Xavier, for instance, said that discovering he was being tracked has profoundly weakened the trust between him and his father. Furthermore, tensions among parents and children may also arise, thus widening the gap between them. Geographical monitoring also directly challenges young people’s need to go into the world independently, both holding back teenage autonomy and generating tensions in parent-child relationships.
【小题1】Why are the two questions raised for Geo-tracking apps in paragraph 1?| A．To display their function. |
| B．To indicate their intelligence. |
| C．To show the worry about privacy. |
| D．To describe parents’ magic power. |
| A．Their desire to monitor their kids. | B．Their concern for their kids’ safety. |
| C．Their eagerness to reach their kids. | D．Their curiosity about their kids’ life. |
| A．Critical. | B．Confused. | C．Indifferent. | D．Mixed. |
| A．It can make children more dependent. |
| B．It may badly influence family relationship. |
| C．It may relieve the tension within the family. |
| D．It can increase children’s trust in their parents. |
